Skinny Love

"Like a corkscrew to my heart, ever since we been apart." -Bob Dylan

Dear Possible Love of My Life,

This isn’t funny. Do you see me laughing? Because I’m not. Okay, well, sometimes I am, but only when I’m with you, which doesn’t happen often. I need you so much closer, Possible Love of My Life. All these miles that our lives have put between us make my heart ache until you come visit. And it only hurts more when you leave, like my heart is forcing itself out of every pore in my body in its efforts to be with you. Which, I guess, some people would find funny, but I definitely don’t.

Can I tell you what I hate about you? Everywhere I go, I think I see you. And it never is you. Like the shaggy-haired and slightly bearded someone at the bar the other night, laughing into his pint of Guinness. For an instant, my skin prickled—“Is it him?” But no, it wasn’t you. Clearly. You would never make a trip to my city without telling me, right? But still, I spent the whole night aching for him to come talk to me, hoping his voice would sound like yours, hating every girl he talked to, smiled at. It was ridiculous, embarrassing, even. I felt like a lovesick puppy, pining for someone just because he looked like you for a second when my glasses were off.

“What is with you and that guy?” My cousin asked me, raising one of his dark eyebrows at me disapprovingly after I missed the dartboard completely for the third time in a row. “Do you know him or something?”

I shook my head. “No, he just reminds me of someone…”

“Well, you better quit staring, Stalkerella.”

I stopped looking (sort of), but I couldn’t stop thinking about you, wanting you there with me, drinking beer and throwing sharp things at the wall like it was before I moved. Like it was when you and I sat at the corner bar, the one that was halfway between our apartments, and ate peanuts and sipped whiskey and let our shoulders brush while we talked. I couldn’t stop wanting you there so that you could come home with me at the end of the night, like you never did before. So I could kiss you in my bed until all our clothes were gone. My dart game suffered—I lost. To my aunt, who can’t play darts to save her life. It was a little embarrassing.
*

You are not my boyfriend, you never have been, but how could I forget the night we touched for the first time, the only time, really.

We were camping with Tyler and Stan in the mountains. The beer had once been cold, but after a day of bobbing in melted ice, it warmed up. We drank it anyway, and the empty cans were crushed into a black plastic bag under the picnic table. The fire snapped and the night chill crept in on us and we kept in on the fire until it was so close it felt like I was burning.

Tyler and Stan were the drunkest, but I could feel the cloudy haze of alcohol and pot in my head, and I could feel your closeness to me under the blanket we shared, wrapped around our shoulders, the heat from your body hotter against my skin than the orange-red blaze from the fire.

Stan kept saying, “Fuck you,” and “Fuck this,” and “Fuck everything,” and the firelight sunk into the smile lines around your mouth when you laughed.

Tyler couldn’t stop talking about Becca Lewinn and how her hair looked so soft, he wanted to sleep on it. When he said the word “sleep,” it was like this heavy quilt fell over us and our eyes dropped and Stan said he was going to fucking bed and Tyler nodded, “Yeah me too,” and they went into one tent. In minutes, I could hear their competitive snoring from inside their sleeping bags.

Somehow, in our drunk sleepiness, you and I ended up in the other tent, zipping our sleeping bags together. “To keep us warmer,” you said, pulling another sweatshirt on over my head for me. “It’s a cold one tonight.”

But the sweatshirt didn’t stay on me for long. Your hands, cold fingertips spreading goosebumps over my skin, found their way under all my clothes, tracing letters across my stomach. Your cold nose pressed against my cheek when you kissed me but your mouth was warm and by the time you cupped my breast, thumb skating over nipple, your hands were, too.

In the morning, I woke with your face pressed into the fabric between my shoulder blades and your warm body wrapped tightly around mine. We smiled sideways at each other while you started the fire again and made coffee in our pajamas, drank it sitting side by side while we waited for Stan and Tyler to emerge from their tent.

Why didn’t we just keep going from there, Possible Love of My Life? Why, when the weekend was over, did we go back to being friends? I liked it better when I fell asleep with your kisses drying on my skin.

We stayed friends, not lovers, but I couldn’t keep my hands off you, most days. Like when I shaved your head. All that smooth, long hair of yours—almost down to your shoulders.

“They said I gotta cut it or find a new job,” you told me, standing in my doorway with an electric razor. “So will you just buzz it for me?”

You sat on the toilet in my little white bathroom with your shirt off, your skin still golden from the summer sun. I stood behind you, sliding the razor over your scalp, running my hands through your dark hair as it fell away, and you leaned your shoulders back against me stomach.

You asked me, “How was your date the other night?”

“Fine,” I said, even though it wasn’t, even though every minute I kept wishing I could blink him into being you.

You asked if I let him kiss me goodnight, which was always code for did I sleep with him?

“No,” I said, even though I did, even though his body made mine feel so good and when I came, I mouthed your name to the ceiling.

When all your hair was gone, I brushed your naked back and shoulders with my hand, watching all the long strands of cut hair float down onto my bathroom floor. You stood in front of the mirror and I stood behind you and we both stared at the curve of your skull. It had been hidden under all that hair for so long, seeing the shape of it again was a surprise.

“Weird,” you said, then asked if I had anything to eat.

I wanted to kiss the back of your neck, your shoulder blades, your spine, wanted to press the warmth of you into me, but instead I told you I’d make some spaghetti.
*

“This is insane,” I keep telling myself. “Completely irrational. Time to love someone else!!!!”

And I try. I do, really. But you’d laugh, Possible Love of My Life, if you saw all the boyfriends I’ve had since I moved away from you. Tears would leak out of the corners of your eyes, you’d laugh so hard. Because they all look like you, in their own little ways; they are all pieces of you, second bests.

For example, there was James. His hair was long, but blonde, not dark like yours, and his eyes were green, but not as wide as yours. Also, he did too much coke and his taste in music was regrettable, to say the least. But I settled for a few months when I first moved here, because he smelled like you; like trees and soap and clean laundry. And when I pulled his hair, bunched it in my fists while we fucked in my almost empty apartment, and if I closed my eyes, I could pretend it was your hair clenched tight in my fingers, I could pretend those heavy breaths in my ear belonged to you, that it was your sweaty chest pressed up against mine.

And then there was Memphis. Kevin, really, but he was from Tennessee, so everyone called him Memphis. When I looked at a picture of him the other day, even I laughed. He’s almost your clone, only with a less aesthetically pleasing nose, and he’s shorter, with better clothes. Not that I don’t love your clothes, Possible Love of My Life. Don’t get me wrong; I adore the white V-necks and the blue jeans and the band t-shirts and the striped sweaters and the red Converse All-Stars with the holes in the sides and the vests and the stupid knit hats. I want them strewn all over my floor, separated into clean piles and dirty piles along with my own. But I have to give Memphis credit—he knows how to put an outfit together (which may or may not be a bad sign for his heterosexuality, but that remains to be seen). He’s just not quite as casual and comfortable as you are. Which was exactly what our relationship was like; I could never get comfortable with him. I kept expecting him to be more interesting, to say something that I really wanted to hear, to do something that made me realize why I was with him. But in the end, I realized instead that no, he wouldn’t. But at least there were some records in his collection worth stealing when I left.

Tor came after that. I know, I know. You’re shaking your head and saying, “For fuck’s sake woman, how many more Tors can you cram into you life?” Because you know that Tor is the name of the first guy who broke my heart. And you know that it’s also the name of my little brother. You, Possible Love of My Life, let me fall asleep in your bed with you when First Tor broke my heart. And you sat with me and my brother Tor on the couch in my parents house and watched “The Fox and The Hound” over and over again until he fell asleep. You were there for all of it. And if you had been there when I met Second Tor at that stupid concert, you would have leaned over and whispered in my ear, “Bad Idea!” But you weren’t there, and I let the new Tor in. He had most of the requirements: rarely maintenanced hair, occasional facial scruff that eventually turned into a full-on beard, a Bob Dylan obsession to rival my own and a childish sense of humor coupled with a biting wit, just like you. And for a while, with Tor the Bad Idea, I forgot about you. It’s true. I did. Which explains why I didn’t return your phone calls for a few months there. Which explains why I started thinking that maybe he could take your place in the pit of my heart and the back of my mind. I really believed he could make me love him more than I loved you.

But I was wrong, obviously. Because he turned out to be not that great. He turned out to have some other girlfriends on the side, which he was masterful at keeping from me, until he wasn’t anymore. Until I caught him red-handed, with his pants down and all that great stuff everyone thinks only happens in movies, so it hurts twice as much when it actually happens in real life.

After Tor, my cousin asked me, “What is it with you and all these hairy, mountain-men-looking dudes?”

“I’ve been watching a lot of Westerns lately,” I said, as if that explained anything. Which it didn’t, really. At all.

But you see, Possible Love of My Life, I didn’t want my cousin to know that the reason they all seemed the same is because I am looking for someone else in their eyes, in their unkempt hair, the shape of their lips and the bow of their legs. I didn’t want my cousin to know that I was looking for you.

Because it isn’t funny, Possible Love of My Life, what you do to me. It isn’t funny that I keep coming back to you, again and again, that all these other men are just distractions. It isn’t funny that you make me want to be somewhere other than where I am, because I like this place, I like my life, except that you’re not in it the way I want you to be. And it isn’t funny that you have no idea, that you’ll ask me who I wrote this about, and I’ll be dying to tell you, to say, “I WROTE IT ABOUT YOU, POSSIBLE LOVE OF MY LIFE! IT’S ALL ABOUT YOU! THEY’RE ALWAYS ABOUT YOU!” But instead, I’ll give you some vague, bullshit answer about how it’s fiction, I’m a fiction writer, and I was just trying to get into the mind of one of my characters, writing in her voice, not mine, and do you want to read some of my novel and see?

It isn’t funny how you are quite possibly THE love of me life, but you haven’t the slightest clue as to how much you mean to me. Or you didn’t until I called you, drunk and sloppy, last night. “Possible Love of My Life,” I said into the phone receiver, “I think I love you.”

You would not say anything back, so, like always, I just kept talking. “I think I love you like kissing in bed all day long and sitting on the same side of the booth while we eat dinner and holding hands on the street. I think I love you like let’s do our laundry together and you can put your books on the same shelf as mine, the red one in the living room or even the blue one next to my bed, the one that all my favorite books are on. You could put your favorite books on that shelf, too, because I think I love you like maybe you could move in with me and we could sit at the kitchen table in the morning with the sunlight on our shoulders and do a crossword puzzle together while we drink tea. I think I love you like that.”

You still did not say anything, and so I said quietly, “Say something, please.”

“Um,” you said.

Because I can’t stand the sound of silence, I kept going, kept talking and talking and talking. “Remember that time,” I said, “when my car broke down and you drove two hours to pick me up even though it was pouring rain that might as well have been snow, it was so cold? Do you remember that? Did you love me at all, then? And what about when you walked in on me when I was changing for my date with that guy who wanted me to suck his dick under the table at the restaurant so I kicked his shins and left? You burst into my room and I was standing there in just my underwear and you stopped in your tracks and stared and I stared back and we just stood there, looking and finally I said, Maybe I should get dressed, and you nodded and said, Maybe you should, but I could tell that every part of you wanted to kiss me as much as I wanted to kiss you? Did you love me then?”

Then, Possible Love of My Life, you did not say what I wanted you to say (“I’m coming, I’m getting in the car now and I’m driving for eight hours without stopping and I will be there soon and then I’ll show you how much I loved you then,” is what I wanted you to say). You said, “You’re drunk, aren’t you?” You said, “I think you should go to bed and I’ll forget this ever happened.” You said, “Goodnight.”

No. No, Possible Love of My Life, I do not want you to forget. That’s why I’m writing you this letter, so that you will not forget. Ever. I’m tired. Tired of just being friends, tired of letting you kiss me accidentally when we’re drunk and waking up friends. Tired of going through second best after second best. Tired of waiting for you to hear what I’m not saying. So I’m saying it, now. And I’m waiting for you to not forget.

Yours. Really,
Me

Why I Am Having A Bad Day

This whole getting dark at 6:00 thing is really getting to me. I can already feel my brain screaming as it dries up from complete lack of serotonin.

And the fact that finding a job has become almost horrifically difficult doesn't help things either. Not only does it make me feel like an incompetent, under-qualified loser, but it throws a real wrench in my whole "save money" thing (mostly because I'm not making any money to save).

My lovers live too far away to touch.

I slept too late, which means I won't be able to sleep tonight, which means I'll be a mess in class tomorrow, which means Marcia will kick my ass.

I've been so unproductive, I'm making myself sick.

It's getting cold out. I hate cold.

Maybe I can think of some more things to bitch about, yeah?

The Difference Between Sex And Sleeping

Boys are always warm. Like portable heaters that are lean and comfortable. But D was warmer than any boy whose heat I've usurped before; warmer even than P was the night I slid inside his sweatshirt with him on top of the hill and pressed my forehead against his neck.

And when D wrapped himself around me under the blanket on the trampoline last weekend, when he pulled me back against his chest and let our legs tangle together and pressed his face into my hair to keep his nose warm, his heat beat into my body, soaking through my clothes and my skin, into my muscles. It felt like a fever everywhere, or like a fire was burning against my back. And then when he linked his fingers with mine and brushed his lips against the back of my neck (maybe by accident), it was like the fire spread all through me, and despite the cold October air biting at my skin wherever it was exposed and despite our tipsy-ness and our tender, brand new attraction to each other, I felt like I could lie there forever without moving. D's warmth made me want winter, made me want to steal him away, bring him home with me to keep me warm at night when the wind in Chicago is so strong, it comes through the closed windows and rustles the curtains in my bedroom.

There's something about sleeping with someone-- actually sleeping-- that is even more intimate to me than sex. Curling up with tangled bodies and being able to actually fall asleep with someone, to feel so comfortable and safe that you can completely let your guard down, that's the kind of sleeping with someone I mean.

Because sleep is the ultimate vulnerability. You're so unaware of everything around you, so unconscious, and when there's someone else in the bed with you, it's like you're letting them-- no, trusting them to protect you, to keep you safe, to not hurt you.

Sex is different. Sex is the closest you can get to someone physically, but these days there seems to be an emotional detachment that comes with sex-- or, more fittingly, fucking. If you sleep with someone you're not in a relationship with, or even if you are, there seems to be this kind of physical selfishness to it (or maybe I'm just sleeping with the wrong people?). It's like you're both trying to get only what you want out of the other person, not really realizing that maybe if you think about what the other person wants, you both might end up getting more out of the experience. Not all sex is like that, of course; there are always exceptions to the rule...

But when you're sleeping, you're just sleeping. The only give and take is of body heat and comfort and closeness. I think I'd rather sleep with someone than sleep with them, if you know what I mean.

Which is why I didn't do anything with D. I didn't turn around and catch his lips with mine and curl my fingers in his hair. I just snuggled into him and fell asleep, because, despite the distance between us, I like him. He may live in a galaxy far, far away (also known as mountains), but he was so real, so genuine, I felt like I'd known him for a long time, like he actually cared about what I was saying and I cared about what he was saying and it wasn't about waiting until we were drunk enough to fall into kissing. It was just about being alive and experiencing each other through who we are. Which sounds slightly vague and completely corny, but it makes sense to me. And it would make sense to D, too.

I Go Home

So, let me begin at the beginning. Michelle, my old baby sitter and the sweetest woman on the planet, got married last weekend in Sarver, PA, where I grew up. Sarver is about forty-five minutes outside of Pittsburgh, but it's not a suburb. It's country. Country like cornfields and woods that don't end in developments or warehouses, forests that just keep going, that you could get lost in. Rolling hills and sweeping views, winding roads and open spaces. I can't even really describe how it felt to be back there, remembering so many little things I thought I'd forgotten, seeing how things have changed and how they haven't. Same with the people. It's a better homecoming than when I go back to Philly. And it felt more like home. It felt like, "this is where my roots are, this is where my feet are planted even though my head is everywhere else, including the clouds." Sure, it's in the middle of fucking nowhere, the "boonies," you might say, fondly referred to by myself and others as Pennsyltucky. Sure, my parents don't live there anymore, but I wish they did so that I could run away from the city sometimes and steep myself in the way that it used to be. Because that place was real, it went on forever, there wasn't as much bull shit. It was just simple. Real.

Part of me really wants to know about this whole other life I could have had if we'd stayed there, if we hadn't moved to Philly in 1997, if we'd stayed in the house my father built with his father in the middle of a cornfield in the middle of the woods. Who would I be? Would I know what I was missing, or would I not be missing it at all? Or am I missing it? Is this me missing the life that really mattered?

Just A Boy

Dear First,

You were just a boy on a bench by the fire. Your hood was pulled up over your hair, shadows hanging in your eyes. Your jeans were torn and you jabbed the coals with a blackened stick like you were angry at them, like they had somehow offended you. I could only see your mouth, full lips curled in a scowl, and your hunched shoulders. The keys on your belt jangled sometimes with the force of your movements, clinking together like broken glass.

"He's a punk," Melissa explained to me in a whisper, pointing at you. "He doesn't date high school girls."

You kicked your combat boots in the dirt and sunk deeper into the shadows. I watched you dig into the pocket of your black sweatshirt, watched the firelight glint off the silver metal of the flask you concealed in your big hands. When Melissa left, I got up and sat back down beside you. You didn't move, didn't look at me, didn't say a word.

"The only living punk in the suburbs," I said, watching you out of the corner of my eyes.

Your shoulders shook a little and you put the flask to your lips. "Fucking almost," you said, your teeth clicking against the mouth of the flask. I heard the liquid slosh and echo inside the metal as you pulled it back into your lap. The sharp smell of whiskey snapped through the air for a moment and then the smoke wrapped around us and all I could smell was fire.

You were just a boy on a bench in the dark, but we sat in silence, sharing your flask and letting our knees knock together, and when you kissed me under the trees later that night, your tongue tasted hot and stinging like the whiskey we drank.


You were just a punkling, a lost little boy who didn't know what he wanted except that it had to be loud and fast and your mom had to hate it. And when I was your girlfriend, you wanted me, too. So I snuck out of my house or said I was sleeping at Stephanie's and we took the train into the city to find the loudness. You were my punkling boyfriend and for you, I wore black and plaid and combat boots and thick eyeliner and went to shows. The kind of shows where I didn't remember the names of the bands, wasn't sure I ever knew. The kind of shows where you would push me out of the mosh pit because it was too crazy and there were too many spikes and sweating boys kicking, but I wanted to be in there, flailing and thrashing with you and I'd scream that I hated you, my voice disappearing into the music, and I'd try to hit you, even though I knew you were just protecting me. And you would grab my wrists and stare right into my eyes and look so angry that all I could do was keep yelling or cry.


You were just a boy in my arms in the dark, your breath hot in my ear, your stomach heavy on mine. You kissed me hard everywhere, your lips leaving bruises on my white throat, hips leaving bruises on mine, marks of our violent love. When you were away from me, I stood naked in front of my mirror and touched each purple mark on my body, thinking of you.


You were just a voice, far away and quiet, on the phone from the psych ward.

"I tried to kill my mom," you said. "Or at least, that's what she told the cops. I don't remember anything except when they found me downtown."

You tried to run away, tried to leave it all behind. But I couldn't understand why you didn't ask me to come with you. I waited the twenty-eight days until you were out, counting each one with sleepless nights and little slices on my body where only you could see; twenty-eight thin, red, scabbed lines on my inner thigh that you thought were pen marks at first.

"Why did you do it?" I asked you, sitting on the edge of your bed, watching you chew your dry, chapped lips.

"Do what?" You asked, running your fingers over my brand new scars.

"Leave me behind?"


You were just a boy in a bed by yourself, staring at cracks in the ceiling and taking too many pills to make the mania stop. Everything else stopped, too. We sat in your basement and listened to your mom vacuum the living room floor above us. You kissed me gently, your dry lips barely touching my skin. Your eyes were blank and dark, the shadows coming from inside.

"We're taking him away," your mother said, her hand on your shoulder while you stared straight ahead. "Somewhere he can get better." She leaned across you and rolled the car window up, backing slowly out of the driveway, away from me.


You were just a boy on a bench by the fire, and when you left me behind for good, you didn't even move.

My Dating Life: A Review

Many guys say they like a forward girl, things like, “I like her to let me know she’s into me—it’s sexy.” This is a lie. No guy that I have ever met has responded positively to knowing that I’m “into” them. And yet I insist on applying the “let him know how you feel” approach to the gentlemen I’m interested in.

For this reason, My Dating Life is pathetic at best. A stunted attempt to connect with any male in tight pants, usually tattooed and on a bike, My Dating Life repeatedly falls short of expectations (both my own and society’s). Datees are typically overjoyed by my eagerness to kiss and ability to pay for my half of the meal, but that’s only the first time; second dates are few and far between.

While contemplating My Dating Life, one should be aware of the fact that the subject (myself) is a young twentysomething in her last year of art school. She is perhaps a little too desperate for male affection, having been an official participant of “the single life” for…well, a good long time. But, it should be noted that she is genuinely an interesting young woman with plenty to offer a potential boyfriend, if a little too eager and upfront.

My Dating Life, however hilarious, is ultimately a dead-in-the-water spectacle of misguided affection and overenthusiastic attempts at hooking a tall, angst-ridden hipster boy.

This Needs an Ending. And a Middle.

Usually, in the early morning silence of 35 Windcrest Lane, Dianna Jameson could hear his heart. 35 Windcrest Lane was located so far from the main road (or any other neighbors or sign of life that could create any sort of unseemly—or even seemly—early morning noise) that the place was silent as the grave until either Dianna Jameson or her lover, Malcolm got out of bed and started making their own various early morning noises—the opening of doors, the slamming up of the toilet seat (or, in Dianna Jameson’s case, if she happened to supersede her lover, Malcolm in the bathroom that morning, the slamming DOWN of the toilet seat), and the relieving of bladders. Since Dianna Jameson was often the first to rise, she could usually hear the beating of her lover, Malcolm’s heart when she woke.

But this morning was different. When she opened her eyes and stretched her slender form from head to toe, pressing her fingertips against the headboard and pointing her toes toward the end of the mattress, something felt strangely curious to her. Or rather, something SOUNDED strangely curious to her. She concentrated, imagining her ears opening like rosebuds to absorb every sound in the room. At first, she could not identify what unsettled her so. She heard the steady sound of her lover, Malcolm’s breathing—in, out, in, out… She heard the creak of the mattress springs as they strained against her languid movements. She heard the beating of—ah. That was it. She did NOT hear the beating of her lover, Malcolm’s heart (which, as I have previously mentioned, was something she was quite accustomed to hearing each morning).

In a panic, Dianna Jameson pounced on her lover and shook him violently. “Malcolm, you festering corpse! What have you DONE to yourself this time?” (It was well known to Dianna Jameson and her kitsch circle of even kitschier friends that her lover, Malcolm had a propensity for experimentation with anything and almost everything that could cause him bodily harm. He vastly preferred illegal substances for this purpose, with a partiality towards injectable heroin).

Malcolm’s eyes sprang open with an instant, wild expression of guilt and horror. “What? What, woman?” He looked about him frantically, his head tossing in every direction imaginable (other than backwards, since it is quite difficult to rotate one’s head one hundred and eighty degrees, even for experienced heroin addicts), searching desperately for the source of Dianna Jameson’s fervor.

“Where’s your heart gone, you rat? I can’t hear it! What have you done with it?” Dianna Jameson had seated herself on her lover’s chest, her thighs clenching his sides tightly as if she were trying to keep him alive in this way, which, I guess you could say, she was, since he’d apparently misplaced his heart.

Malcolm struggled to prop himself up on his elbows (a struggle because of Dianna Jameson’s location on his person) and peered inquisitively down at his bare chest. Dianna Jameson peered with him, and they both discovered, much to their confusion, that everything appeared quite normal in that region. His skin was unblemished and smooth, and there was no sign that a heart—or anything else, for that matter, had been extracted from his chest at any point in time.

Still convinced that she had not been able to hear her lover’s heart when she woke, Dianna Jameson pressed her ear to his chest. She bit her lip and closed her eyes, concentrating as hard as she could possibly allow herself, listening for the steady thud of ventricles pounding open an closed, propelling blood through heart and veins.

She heard nothing.

With great consternation, she swatted her lover, Malcolm about the head and pulled at his hair, shouting that he was an unbearable fuckhead and if he didn’t figure out where his heart had got to, she would personally see to it that he died a most uncomfortable and gruesome death for putting her through such agony.

Her lover, Malcolm managed to extricate himself from beneath her wildly flailing body and retreat to the bathroom, where he shut and locked the door tightly, slammed the toilet seat up and began relieving his bladder with a sigh of satisfaction. He didn’t exactly mind that his heart was missing. He misplaced everything he owned on a regular basis, and his heart was nothing special. Obviously, he could go about living and breathing and functioning, and of course, doing heroin without it—although the lack of an organ to pump blood through his body could possibly mean that he’d have to begin smoking the substance instead of injecting it, as he doubted it would have the same effect it had had when he was in possession of a heart.

“YOU BETTER FIND THAT HEART, YOU ASSHOLE!” Dianna Jameson shouted to her lover, Malcolm through the bathroom door, kicking it violently to emphasize her point.

Malcolm simply flushed the toilet in response and refused to open the door.

Dianna Jameson, frustrated at the apparent loss of her lover’s heart and not yet ready to take part in the day, seeing as she had not completed her morning stretches, stomped back into the bedroom in protest.

She-Vegans, Electricity, and Tattoos: An Exploration of Other Things You can do in a Walk-In Besides Keep Food Cold

I'm working on tightening this up for submission to a favorite Literary Journal of mine. Help would be appreciated.

A flash of electric purple, the smell of coconut and hibiscus, and the dessert that Jordy had just placed on The Pass was gone. If he glanced out over The Pass and into The Dining Room, he would see Elle delivering the dessert to a booth full of tattooed and pierced vegan women, who would all look from the dessert to him and wave flirtatiously, maybe bite their lips and try to make their eyes melt. And that was why he never looked. He didn’t ask to be the type of guy every she-vegan seemed to want, and he was getting tired of all the staring and gaping and flirting. He was ready, he was realizing more and more, for something else, something…real. Years of fucking around and then all of the sudden, this little girl, barely twenty-one—basically the same age as his little sister—walks into the restaurant and flicks her purple hair over her shoulder and asks him about his tattoos, runs her warm fingers down the length of the tattoo on his side before she even tells him her name and suddenly, he doesn’t want to fuck around anymore. Not with anyone but the purple-haired girl. Elle.

But the she-vegans were staring. He could feel their eyes and hear them laughing, louder than normal, trying to get his attention, lure him into looking up at them. Seriously? Was he really that attractive? He was a too-tall, too-skinny pale dude with too-dark hair, who looked younger than his twenty-five years—younger, even, than his twenty-year-old sister, who everyone always thought was the older of the two. He had too many tattoos and not enough peircings and looked more like The Ghost of Punks Past than a living, breathing vegan being. SO WHAT WAS WITH ALL THE STARING?!?!

Another flash of electric purple, but this time, it wasn’t so flashy. He looked up and right into Elle’s big, round, electric blue eyes (everything about that girl was electric).

“The Ladies of Table Eight gave me something for you,” she said in that scratchy-yet-feminine voice of hers, and she handed him a piece of paper so heavily perfumed it almost completely masked the subtle coconut and hibiscus scent of electric Elle.

He took the paper from her, his fingers brushing hers and creating a sort of electric storm where they touched—tiny lightning bolts and little shocks like needle pricks. And then she was gone, cleaning up some guy’s spilled martini at the front of the restaurant. Jordy watched her go, watched the round muscles that made up her ass as she bent to sweep up the glass, wipe up the alcohol on the floor so no one slipped, and he watched the martini-spiller watch them, too. Then he looked down at the piece of paper in his hands and unfolded it, smearing the white paper with whipped cream and pineapple juice from his fingers.

Orgasmic dessert, Prince Piercing.
What else can you do that to?
♥ Kate, Jade, Teka and Chloe

Why? Why always with the stupid note-passing and trying too hard to be sexy? This wasn’t high school, for chrissake. He much preferred the natural swing of Elle’s hips, her comical breed of sexual innuendo (“How’s it hanging?” she’d asked this afternoon when she slammed into the kitchen, spilling clothes and eye pencils, a pocket-size journal and her cell phone out of her purse and onto the floor in her wake and not even noticing). He preferred her electricity to the same-thing-every-time that he got from the She-Vegans who ordered dessert and ogled him from across the dining room.

Fuck open kitchens. FUCK THEM. That’s where the problem lay. With this small restaurant thing; only fifteen tables, most of them two-tops, the dim lighting (due to Greg’s “A Little Dim Lighting and Inconspicuous Dirt Behind the Potted Plants or Under the Booths Where No One Can See Never Hurt Anyone” Policy), and the goddamn open kitchen. He would have practically killed to be back in the enclosed, messy and hot-as-hell part of the kitchen with Rich Peel, doing dishes among all the stainless steel prep tables (Elle’s knee bumping into his hip this afternoon as she sat on the table next to his cutting board, waiting for Greg to show up with the produce so they could all go unload, but she was sitting there, on the prep table, swinging her leg and not caring that her knee was bumping into his hip and distracting him from his tomato dicing like nothing else could), instead of out there on The Line where, if they really wanted to, really craned their necks, maybe lifted themselves out of their chairs a little, the guests could see over The Pass and into the kitchen. But they didn’t have to crane or lift to see Jordy. He was so damn tall, all they had to do was turn their heads toward the Kitchen and there he was, his head and shoulders in plain and unobstructed view.

Greg wandered by, heading to the back for more Seitan because it was crazy busy again—which would explain the flashes of electric purple instead of the whole, slow-motion smiles and blue-eye glances she gave Jordy on the slower nights. He patted Jordy on the back as he walked by and Sarah handed him a new ticket over The Pass.

“Table Five wants dessert.”

Jordy glanced over The Pass at Table Five. Two blonde chicks with more tattoos than skin grinned back at him and then Elle breezed by, into the back and his eyes followed her into The Walk-In and he felt a sudden need for more Whipped Soy Cream, stored in a box on the bottom right shelf of The Walk-In, behind the mangos and he had to go get it right that second or else Table Five would be completely dissatisfied with their dessert and all hell would break loose. He bolted from the kitchen, bursting into The Walk-In and pulling the door shut just as Elle straightened and turned around, her hands full of mangos.

“I need some Whipped Soy Cream.”

“That’s great.” She rolled her eyes, her armful of mangos bumping against his chest.

“Need help with those?”

“Nope. I got it under control.” A mango rolled out of her arms and landed next to his shoe.

“I can see that,” he said, crouching slowly to retrieve her mango, his eyes watching her watch him closely.

“Thanks.” As he put the mango back in the box, not her arms. “That’s exactly where I wanted that to go. Back in the box.”

Jordy pulled another mango from her stack and dropped it back into the box, grinning down at her, his eyes teasing.

“Seriously, knock it off!” Her breath puffed out of her mouth, a thick white cloud of heat in all that cold.

Another mango from her arms into the box and she was glaring at him with those electric blue eyes, and he was grinning. Couldn’t help himself. Especially because if she moved her arms to hit him like she usually did when he was pissing her off, all her precious mangos would fall onto the floor and then where would she be?

Jordy moved closer to Elle, the tip of his shoes pressed against hers. He looked right into her sparking eyes and dropped another mango back into the box, undaunted by her attempts to intimidate him with her sadly un-icy stare.

“Fuck you, Jordy. Let me past. It’s fucking freezing.”

He didn’t say a word, just leaned in a little closer, lips mere inches from hers. Another mango in the box and out of her arms.

“Jordy, seriously.” Her voice wasn’t quite as sharp as it had been before. She was starting to get it. He extended his arms, clasped one hand around the cold metal shelf behind her head, put another mango in the box, used his hips to pin her back against the shelf—she was stuck between him and the stacks of Seitan, limes, mangos, veganaise, pico de gallo.

She gets it a little more, even if it’s fucking freezing in here, he thought. She’s getting it. Her eyes sparked with blue mischief and she bit her lip, her eyes on his lips, his eyes on hers, watching those white teeth sink into that full, red lower lip, waiting for him, glistening and wet.

Jordy leaned past her a little, his lips hovering just centimeters away from her ear lobe, her neck, her jaw, the white fog of her ragged breathing mingling with the thin mist of his. The mangos hit the floor with dull, ripe thuds, rolling under the shelves and into the spaces between boxes, disappearing.

Finally, now that the mangos are gone. He pressed his lips to hers, gentle, searching, opening her mouth with his. He could hear her breathing hard through her nose, feel the heat radiating from her skin through his t-shirt when her hand rested on his stomach. His eyes were closed, he was just feeling the electricity of her touch, feeling the spark when she pushed her hips forward and into his, their bodies melding, seamless.

A dish crashed to the floor in the world outside of The Walk-In, loud and sharp. Elle jumped away from him, bumping into the shelf, the containers of food rocking violently, but not spilling. Her eyes were wide and wild.

“DAMN COMMIES!” Rich the dishwasher, shouted at the broken bits of dinnerware.

“I should get back,” Elle whispered to Jordy’s shoulder, her eyes on the ground. She ducked under his arm and slipped out the heavy door.

Jordy let out a long, deep breath and rested his forehead against the metal shelf where Elle had just been standing, listening to the cling and clatter of the dining room and the tinkling of glass in the kitchen as Rich swept up the broken plate. He needed a minute or two before he went back out there, needed to stop thinking about what it felt like to be kissing such an intense cloud of energy, electricity. Needed to stop thinking about getting her down to that lacy, hot-pink thong that had been peeking out of the top of her pants all night when she bent over to wipe off the tables, and he wanted to get her all the way down to that and then take THAT off. Take it off and then throw it on the floor. He wouldn’t be opposed to putting it on his head, if she was that kind of girl. But he wanted to get her down to that pink thong and then down to less and then fuck her ‘til she came. And screamed. There would have to be lots of screaming because screaming was hot. It was FUCKING HOT, but this wasn’t helping with his situation. He needed to think about cold. It’s freezing in here. Snow drifts and frozen sidewalks and his mother in her nasty old moth-eaten fur coat and his father’s snow boots, shoveling the driveway and singing Patsy Cline in her tuneless, crackly, paper-thin voice. There. That was MUCH better. He was almost ready to emerge into the public eye, would be completely ready if it weren’t for the smell of coconuts and hibiscus frozen in the air. Think about Greg. Greg catching you in here, taking five in the middle of the Saturday night dinner rush and it won’t matter if you have a boner or not. You’ll be toast. Fucking fried (except that we don’t fry anything at Horizon’s, so you’ll be grilled, but either way, you’ll be fucked). So get the hell out of here and pretend like nothing happened.

Jordy grabbed the Whipped Soy Cream and a handful of mangos and left The Walk-In, the bright lights of the Kitchen screwing with his eyesight for a second. And then, out of the piercing white of the light, there was Rich Peel, sweeping madly at the bits of shattered plate, his plastic apron crinkling and crackling with every movement.

Pretend like nothing happened.

“What’s goin’ on, Rich?” Jordy asked, raising one eyebrow inquisitively.

Rich looked up at him through his thick, dirty corrective lenses, which could only have been manufactured in the 1970s, and said, “Chicken pies.”

“What?”

“Chicken pies and commies. They’re coming around the mountain when she comes.” He flicked the last bit of broken glass into the dustpan without taking his eyes off of Jordy. “Chicken pies.”

“Oh…kay.” Jordy nodded at the dishwasher and walked faster than he usually did back to the Line, where Kate grabbed the mangos from him.

“Thank god,” she said, starting to peel the orange and green skin off the fruit. “I sent Elle in to get these like, ten minutes ago. I swear, that girl is useless sometimes.”

Jordy just stared past Kate, out into the Dining Room, looking for the familiar purple flash of electricity that meant Elle was on the move, but she must have been in the bathroom because she was nowhere to be seen and it wasn’t like there were a lot of places to hide in such at tiny restaurant.

Jordy shoved some shredded lettuce into a salad bowl and started sprinkling the necessary garnishes on so Greg could charge nine dollars for a pile of lettuce. And thought about Elle. Envisioned her head tilted back, neck exposed, mouth open, emitting screams and moans of pleasure. You knew you were doing something right when they couldn’t keep it to themselves. Get the salad up on the Pass. Greg looked pissed. Glaring and shit. But there was Elle. He could see her over the Pass, big blue eyes and that messy hair with all that purple. Greg cleared his throat from way down the line, staring at Jordy. It’s fucking ready, asshole. If he really said that to Greg, he’d get fucking fired or something worse, strung up by his toes in the Walk-In, blood dripping slowly from his ears drip drip plop drip drip plop. Dead. But fuck Greg. Fuck the way he always stared at Elle’s ass and didn’t listen when she was talking. He was short and his hair was greasy and thinning and he wasn’t even a vegan, so fuck him. He could take his frying pan and his “hurry the fuck up with that food” stare and shove it up his ass.

Jordy slammed the bowl of salad up onto the Pass and there she was. He smelled her first—coconut and hibiscus. She always smelled like that—tropical—even after a whole night of running food and cleaning up spilled booze and opening wine bottles and making coffee. He smelled her and there she was and then she was gone with the salad and for a second, he froze because she hadn’t even looked at him, just pulled the salad bowl off the Pass and looked at the ticket to see which table it went to and her eyes hadn’t even glanced at him.

But then, she looked back at him, just before she disappeared into the sea of vegan diners and flashed him one of those half smiles that made her cheeks redden, flushed.

She flashed that smile and watched Jordy shake his head and watched that smile flick across his mouth and watched him toss that salad and she wanted him to toss her. Toss her in with the sheets and she wanted her legs above her head, maybe even her toes banging against the wall or the headboard or something because he was doing such a good job of fucking her. She wanted him to toss her and fuck her ‘til she came and she was telling him that with her smile. She just hoped he was getting it.

She wanted him to get it. Badly. Because if he got it and she KNEW that he was getting it, then maybe she could figure out what the fuck all this meant. Yeah, they’d been flirting shamelessly since the first day they’d worked together, but flirting was harmless in most cases. But he’d kissed her. That was no accident in there earlier. He hadn’t slipped and fallen and landed on her mouth. He’d leaned in, wanted it from he start by the way he blocked the door with his body, unloaded all those mangos from her arms. So skinny and wrapped in all that black. She just wanted to peel it off and run her fingers all over that pale white vegan boy skin. And those tattoos. Oh, and his thin vegan boy lips, one metal stud pierced through the left corner of the bottom lip. She wanted to bite that lip, taste the metal of that piercing, taste HIM—root beer, mint, cigarettes and metal.

Oh, but she needed to stop thinking about fucking the salad chef when she was supposed to be running food, because she’d almost given that salad to the wrong table and Greg was watching her, glowering. She could practically see the steam coming out of his ears. She backtracked and set the salad down on the right table in front of the correct person, flashed them a lovely smile and then made a bee-line to the Walk-In, sweating from the heat and moving fast and thinking too much about fucking Jordy. She needed to cool down, breathe in cold air and tune out all the noise and crazy-ness and intensity of this night. She breezed past Jordy, barely glancing at him, and yanked the Walk-In door shut behind her, leaned against it and closed her eyes.

She had to figure this out, this thing with Jordy. It had started out as flirting, definitely. She’d been undeniably attracted to him, wanted to sleep with him. But that was the first week they worked together. The more they worked together, the more he walked her to her car after the restaurant closed, the more she got to know HIM instead of his skin, the more she wanted something more from him, WITH him. And she wasn’t typically the relationship girl. She was a fan of hook-ups, usually. Sort of. Well, maybe not really, that’s just what she always found herself getting into. But there was something about him, something that made her wonder—no, not wonder, just KNOW that he’d be there for her if she needed him…

The Walk-In door opened, the coolness of the door yanked away from her back and all of the sudden she was flailing backwards. She’d been leaning too hard against the door and now that she didn’t have the extra support, she was screwed, about to land hard on the floor. Her ass was gonna hurt tomorrow.

Or not? She felt arms around her, catching her, propelling her forward into the Walk-In. She recognized the tattoos on those forearms—Jordy. But then she had her back against the only un-shelved wall space in the walk-in and Jordy was against her and the door was closed and he was kissing her. Hard and full. Eyes closed, desperate. Her fingers tore at his belt and tugged at his shirt and his fingers raked through her hair and slid over her breasts and they were hot and their bodies were moving but the Walk-In was cold—freezing, actually. Jordy pulled Elle’s hips against his and she was about to rip his belt out of the loops and drop it somewhere, wherever, when the door to the Walk-In creaked open.

They jumped away from each other almost as fast as they had collided and Jordy turned his back to the door, frantically fumbling with his unbuckled belt and trying to take care of any other obvious signs that he had just been fooling around, and Elle bent down and started grabbing lemons and piling them into her arms, hoping that she looked busy and not guilty in the bright light from the kitchen now pouring into the semi-darkness.

“Chicken pies,” Rich said, poking his head into the Walk-In and handing a broken plate to Elle. “Chicken pies and commies.” Then, he pulled his head from the doorway and let the door swing shut.

Elle looked at the broken plate shard, turning it over in her hands, and sighed.

“That was close.” Jordy looked at her, clothes all ruffled and her cheeks flushed and her eyes sparking bright blue in the dim Walk-In light.

“Yeah, it was. But Jordy, I don’t think this is the best way too…the best place to do this.” She was still breathless, still crouched beside the damp, dilapidated lemon box, a few bright citruses still resting in her arms.

He gave her a slightly blank look, obviously not getting what Elle was hinting at.

“WHAT THE FUCK are you two doing in here? It’s the middle of the fucking dinner rush on fucking Saturday night and you’re in the fucking Walk-In screwing around?” Greg was standing in the doorway, his face red, livid with anger.

Elle’s face drained of color, whitening in horror, and Jordy froze, his fly still at half mast, against the shelves.

“Get the fuck back out on the floor and do your fucking jobs!”

The two of them lit out of the Walk-In as fast as they could, speeding back to their respective jobs, leaving Greg fuming in the giant fridge.

Hours later, after all the guests were gone and the were floors swept and mopped, Greg practically blew a gasket yelling at the both of them until tears welled in the corners of Elle’s eyes, but didn’t fall. Which pissed Jordy off because what kind of boss makes a little lovely like Elle cry because she spent more than ten seconds in a walk-in and thank GOD he didn’t know what they were REALLY doing in there, because Jordy wasn’t quite sure what Greg’s policy on employee dating was (although Greg’s WIFE was also the pastry chef, so…).

As soon as Greg calmed down and paid the both of them, Elle burst into the parking lot, not even bothering to punch out, and headed toward her pick-up, walking so quickly, Jordy had to run to catch her arm.

“Elle, stop. Hold up a second.” He wrapped his fingers around her arm, gently tugging her back toward him. “Can I talk to you?”

“Jordy, this is kind of a bad night. I mean, I’m just feeling kind of all over the place and having Greg flip shit like that for half an hour…I just need to go. Home. Y’know?” She was looking past him, over his shoulder at the closed back door of the restaurant.

“But I thought we could—“

Something snapped. Maybe from being yelled at, maybe from all the sexual tension that had exploded tonight—more than once, and Elle just snapped. “Listen Jordy,” she was practically yelling, but she didn’t sound pissed. Just slightly frantic. “I don’t want to fuck you—well, I mean, I do, but I don’t want it to be meaningless and stupid because even though it feels good when you’re doing it, I’m just tired of waking up the next morning and regretting what I did the night before, and I know that sounds retarded and like something straight out of a Kate Hudson movie—or some other shitty movie that I’d never actually admit to seeing, unless it’s ‘Almost Famous,’ but that doesn’t count and I know I’m rambling and talking really fast and now you’re laughing, and it’s not funny.” Elle stamped her foot, a smile tickling at her lips because Jordy was leaning against her truck, thin and dark in all his black clothing, sharp contrast against the white paint of her pick-up, and he was laughing and she was laughing and the whole night was so crazy, it felt good to be laughing.

“Seriously. Stop laughing.” She looked at the ground, blushing, and shoved him a little with her hip.

“All right, all right, I’m stopping.” Jordy bit his bottom lip, pushed at his piercing a little with his tongue. He was still smiling though, holding back a laugh.

“Really though, what I’m saying is that there were some good parts about today…”

“Yeah?” He looked at her out of the corner of his eyes.

“Yeah.” She nodded, smiling. Grinning, really. “Some really good parts. And I like you. I REALLY like you. AND I don’t want to do something retarded to fuck that up because it’s not every day that I come across someone I actually want to sleep with AND you know, BE…with. So of course I don’t want to fuck it up. I’d be crazy to fuck it up. And—“

“And you’re rambling again.”

“And you’re laughing again.”

“It’s cute.”

“Did you say cute? Did you just call me cute?”

“I did. I did, indeed.” He was leaning toward her again, smiling and looking at her lips.

“Did you hear ANYTHING I just said?” Leaning closer to him, watching his lips.

“Yeah, I did.” He was so close, their lips practically touching.

“Then why are you trying to kiss me anyway?” She wasn’t exactly backing away, shying from his closeness.

“’Cause I like you, too.”

And then, he was kissing her, leaning against her truck and kissing her, tasting her, getting used to it because he was hoping that taste would be around for a while.

As Jordy and Elle were kissing and making plans to go on a real, honest-to-god date after work tomorrow night and kissing more against her truck, Rich Peel trudged through the parking lot, lugging three big, dripping, smelly bags of trash behind him, muttering to himself about chicken pies and commies, his favorite subject, as he swung the trash bags over his head and into the dumpster, splattering trash juice all over the parking lot.

Rusty Fire Arms

His skin is tanned golden brown and I can see underneath it the white of his bones, shaping his wide shoulders as he leans toward the fire in the dark. Blonde hair falling into blue eyes. My fingers itch to grab hold of those tousled locks, to pull him to me, our desperate breath warm in each other’s ears. A flash of firelight, angry orange and red, on his bare chest. He stretches and leans against the tree, linking his fingers behind his head, his elbows sharp points jutting into darkness.

He is mine. I will not share him. Ever. My chest tightens at the thought of him leaving, disappearing into the mountains to breathe with the trees there. I know he will go; nothing I say or do ever makes him stay, but still, I try.

The night smells of charred pine and heated skin. It presses against my face, warm and urgent.

“Don’t go,” I say, my voice crackling in my throat like burning paper, rasping across the fire to his sun-burnt ears. “Don’t go this time.”

His eyes flash blue at me, burning my skin hotter than the fire between us. He bites his lip, tosses his head to clear the hair from his eyes and reaches into the pocket of his worn blue jeans, his arm whispering against the bare skin of his torso. He pulls his hand from his pocket, uncurls his calloused fingers. In his open palm, his silver Leatherman knife glints in the firelight.

His arm is long, the muscles shaped, tight and smooth beneath his skin. I am beside him now, my fingers running the length of his arm, tracing the blue lines of veins until I meet his hand. I touch the Leatherman and fierce gooseflesh spreads from my fingertips, up my arm, and across my chest; the Leatherman is freezing, like it’s been pressed against ice cubs in his pocket.

He jerks the Leatherman away from me possessively. It is his. He will not share it. Ever. With a simple flick of his wrist, he dislodges the sharp, cold knife from the depths of the Leatherman, clutching it tightly in his left hand. He shifts his body away from me slightly and presses the knife blade into the muscle of his shoulder where it begins the gentle slope into his neck. Across the fire again, I watch as he saws into his arm, the small silver blade of the kinfe sinking into the smooth sun-browned skin. Dark red blood, black in the firelight, pools to the surface of his skin, welling and seeping from the gash, which reaches now from his armpit to the middle of his shoulder blade. Blood streams run down his arm, across his chest, between his fingers. The thick, red liquid drips into the dirt beneath him, the sound of sit echoing off the trees and melting into the cracking of the flames between us. He smells of iron and fire, charred and sharp.

He turns his head to me, still sawing the knife deeper and deeper into his own flesh. His face is blanched but blank, and his eyes lock onto mine, sparking and shining, a clear blue color, almost black in the firelight. His right arm hangs, gaping, from his torso, the bone a prefect white circle, clearly sawed through. Only bloody strings of muscle, sinew and skin keep the limb from breaking away completely. The fingers of his right hand, though, are still moving, his fist clenching and unclenching, his fingernails stained red with the blood pooling in his palm.

With one last jerk of the knife, so violent that even his hair shakes in front of his eyes, the remaining skin and muscle are fully severed and the right arm comes completely free of his body, floating slowly to the ground beside him.

Carefully, he leans down and uses his left hand to roll the amputated limb up his leg, into his lap, the hand now limp, fingers flapping with each rotation. He begins to gently fold the right arm into neat squares, each one smaller than the first. Blood seeps out each time he creases the fold, staining his pants and sprinkling the ground around him. When his arm has been folded to the size of my pocket, all the blood gone from it, he tosses the souvenir across the fire to me.

I catch it, cradling it gently in my hands, my waist tingling with the remembered warmth of that arm, usually flung across my body while its owner sleeps with reckless abandon behind me.

“Take good care of that,” he says, his voice muffled by the thread he holds in his mouth as he stitches up the stump left by his amputation. “I’ll need it back someday.”

I slide the neatly folded arm into my pocket. “I won’t let it rust,” I whisper.

When I look up, he is gone, the scent of blood and sun-burnt skin left by him smelling more potent than the burning wood. I call for him, wanting desperately to give him something of my own to take into the mountains, but he doesn’t answer. Only the wind in the trees, rushing through the leaves and blowing the smoke of the fire into my face.

“This arm isn’t good enough,” I say to the empty space he has left behind. “I want a leg, too.”

Memoirs. Endings. Jack Kerouac (The Obsession Continues).

So I've been thinking about memoirs. Or creative non-fiction. Whatever you want to call it. And what I want to know is, how do you end a book that's about a life, when it's still happening? How do you sit there, Mr. Kerouac, in front of your type writer and think, "This story is about my life and my life is still happening and how do I keep myself from writing this forever and ever and never end it?"

I know people do it all the time; end stories about their lives. Hello, memoirs. But how do you choose where to end it? I can't even figure out where to end my novel--which is FICTIONAL, which means I can do anything I want with it (or really, anything my characters want). I could have a fucking fire-breathing dragon swoop in and rain destruction down on the little Philadelphia suburb my story takes place in. Probably no one would publish it if I ended it like that, but I could, if I wanted to.

But how do you choose? How do you say, "Oh, this is a good place to stop writing about my life," and make it work like Kerouac does?

See, my problem is that in general, I'm terrible at endings. I think it's because I'm afraid to make that final decision, put that last period down. Because isn't there more? There's always more. I want the story to keep going. I always hate it when a good movie ends, or when I reach the last page of an amazing book. I get so attached to the characters, their lives, the place, that I never want to stop. There has to be more, right? My mind just goes nuts with all the other things that could happen.

So I can't stop. I can never stop writing.

Which doesn't solve my problem with endings at all.